In the BattleTech community online, Catalyst games is something of a darling because they’re a) producing new copies and updates of classic FASA BattleTech tabletop game rules, and b) producing new mech models for that game. They’re doing it regularly (through kickstarters), and they’re putting products on shelves, which is enabling a new generation of nerds to make jokes about Urbanmechs and Steiner Scout Squads. Very cool. Full disclosure, I like BT, own the original book/kit/cardboard proxies, I paint a lot of BT models for my buddies, and I play it occasionally, but I’m not a True Fan and these are just the opinions of a barely-adequate hobbyist mini painter who has zero sculpting skills and is talking about the experience of someone getting these models to paint them. None of this is shade about Catalyst resurrecting a beloved game. None of this is about Catalyst’s sculptors producing some pretty slick updated models. This is, if anything, about Catalyst’s production methods.
I really like that you can play BT with bottlecaps if you want to. Model agnosticism fills me with joy. What I have a problem with is that there is exactly one commercial supplier of BT mechs (Catalyst) and their production quality is garbage.
Let’s imagine a 10 point scale, not of miniature sculpting, but of miniature production; how easy the model is to prepare for priming, and how good does the surface look when finished, that sort of thing. “Entry level 2010s FDM prints that look like the Michelin Man” are at 0 because all you get is a sort-of-shape that you can’t paint. “Nearly flat plastic army men from moulds machined in 1956” are at 1 because you can kind of paint details after you cut away 50% of the plastic to get distinct limbs. Ral Partha 80’s lead are not flat but have a ton of flashing and bubbles; 2-3. Older Reaper minis from the 2000s are properly 3D and have less flashing for a 4, newer Reaper minis with flashing cleverly hiding along sword blades and hair and fur are a 6, but you still need to scrape those mould lines/flashing. Printing a sculpt on a resin printer with middling supports gets you pitting and protrusions where the supports snap and need some sanding; 5. Printing 20 micrometer layers on a resin printer with really good supports that snap off flush and easy gets you 8-9. Competition busts and the like, those are 10s.
Catalyst is producing 3s. See that Ral Partha lead model up there? Much love to classic Ral Partha, but they weren’t what we have now. Catalyst sculpts look way cooler and more dynamic and than the 90s models. But the production quality is pretty close to 80s Ral Partha. The flashing is maddening, the casts are occasionally offset, nothing has a sharp edge (which is an entirely new problem Ral Partha didn’t have), and the parts come pre-glued so scraping flashing is between a PITA and impossible. Let me just whine about the Catalyst model production, and compare them to Reaper. Reaper sells models that come out of a two-part mould and injection press just like Catalyst.
On a modern Reaper miniature hero there’s a line that runs around, usually, the outside of arms and legs, hair, and hat, and around the inner thighs. I can scrape most of that off pretty easily, that’s almost always the only flashing I have to deal with, and the sculptors for Reaper are increasingly clever and put the flashing along things like sword edges or capes or parallel to fur or hair where a missed line can sort of hide among the details. Catalyst, on the other hand, holy shit. I don’t know if the flashing could be better on features like smooth gun barrels, but it’s hard to imagine it being worse. I have an easy time scraping a line across armour panels- but that line then follows the edge of the panel down onto the superstructure, so I have to fuck around with an inside corner, which never looks good. And the feet are highly detailed and have at least three lines of flashing. And then I always have leftover flashing stuck between a hundred little ridges on accordion joints and you can’t scrape that, and you can’t melt it with tamiya or you’ll lose the ridges, so you gotta try to cut or scrape each individual little divot- god, I hate Catalyst flashing. And then because it’s all pre-glued when you get to the torso you can see nice clear flashing trapped between the rib cage and the inside of the arm because they’re always posed with an arm down like a tough guy, yeah cool very action hero looks great- but if the arm’s glued in place already how the blue fuck am I supposed to get rid of the flashing? I’m jabbing x-acto blades in there, I’m wiping tamiya, I’m cutting 1/8″ strips of sandpaper, and if they just came in parts I could be running the back of a blade across this or swiping a sanding stick, one pass and I’d be done.
TL;DR Catalyst flashing makes me really, really mad.
Look, they’re great sculpts and not the worst casts. But they’re way closer to the worst casts than a two million- or a seven million– dollar kickstarter should ever be. I like their designs. The sculpting team deserves credit. They’re visually appealing, they firmly reference the beloved ’84 FASA designs while not being nearly as, you know, “listening to Van Halen’s new record on my Walkman and doodling awesome robots on my 11th grade math notes” in style. But their production? Trash.
Here’s a lineup of some Axman models. There’s the classic metal model on the right, the AXM-1N. In the middle is the AXM-2N that Catalyst sells. Obviously better, right? Doesn’t look like a 70’s SF flick puppet. Nice clear parts, cool weapon design, neat armoured plates. Flashing I spent fifteen minutes scraping off and cursing. The new models even have Tactical Rocks for more dynamic poses, in the form of defeated enemy mechs! Cool stuff.
Until you look to the left, at the fan-made sculpt I found, and threw onto really bad auto-generated supports because I don’t know what I’m doing, and I got such crisp goddamned details that it makes the Catalyst model look like someone poured melted plastic milk bottle caps into a sand mould. I got a file for free and printed it on a $300 home machine I owned for a week, and it doesn’t just look better, it looks so much better than the current state of the art commercially available BattleTech models that those look like playdough. Look at the corners of the armour plates. The Catalyst model looks soft. There are no sharp corners, all the armour plates are rounded like smartphone corners. And it’s not like the model I downloaded is a vastly superior sculpt! They’re both good, slightly different design styles, I don’t think one’s better designed than the other. The casting is just infuriatingly bad. If I was a committed BT player, I’d spend the hour or three it took to learn how to properly support models and get my printed AXM-2N into a form where I could print, cure, and then spend a couple seconds snapping supports, maybe running a brief sanding across smooth outer surfaces, and priming them.
Catalyst Games; I love you guys, I love what you’re doing. You have multiple games I play and enjoy. Your BattleTech models make me want to punch drywall. Please sell home 3d print licenses for presupported official models so I can paint a crispy-edged lance of Urbanmechs like R2-D2’s D-Squad from Clone Wars and choose violence at my buddy’s King Crab.
